Kazakhstan will retain flour and bread prices

Follow-up

Flour and bread prices will not go up in Kazakhstan, Tengrinews.kz reports citing the press-service of Kazakhstan Agriculture Ministry.

“Regardless of the scenario that will develop and the expected (scares) grain harvest related to drought in Kazakhstan we guarantee that there will be no problem with industrial grain supplies to the country’s regions and flour and bread prices will not be growing,” the Ministry declared.

Agriculture Ministry assured that there were no plans to introduce any restrictions like a ban on grain export.

“According to Kazakhstan Statistics Agency, we had 9.8 million tons of grain as of July 1, 2012 (from the previous harvest). Thus, the total volume of grain is 23.8 million tons, which is enough to cover the domestic needs and also export around 10 million tons,” the Ministry added.

According to the Ministry, the Food Corporation (government's food supply arm) will form a grain reserve in the amount of 2.5 million tons of grain to ensure food security.

According to Agricultural Minister Assylzhan Mamytbekov, the drought will affect prices of feed crops. “Drought and feed crops will be closely linked. The more drought extensive we have, the more problems with feed crops we get. Yesterday we had a meeting. There are regions where harvesting and stocking up of hay and feed crops is lagging behind the schedule. They have stocked up only 13-15 percent of the total required amount. The instruction was made to speed up this work. In general, there are problems especially in private household farms that focus on cattle breeding. Most of the farms still have last-year’s reserves of hay and feed crops, though,” the Minister said.